The Role of Culture in Coping: An Autoethnography-Lived Experience of Navigating the Trauma of Breast Cancer and Treatment

Chinese American women have been part of the United States immigration history since the Gold Rush in 1852. They have experienced physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual challenges with minimal support. The premise of this study is that when facing the hardship of a breast cancer diagnosis, Chinese American women are resilient by adhering to their cultural beliefs and using effective coping styles to cope with their cancer. Based on previous studies, Chinese American women have been considered to have a lower risk of breast cancer and have a 30% lower death rate than non-Asian women. However, breast cancer incidents are increasing rapidly. Still, limited studies have been conducted on Chinese American women with breast cancer and coping strategies. Thus, the purpose of this autoethnography was to explore the lived experience of a Chinese American woman navigating the trauma of coping with breast cancer and examining how the role of culture ties into her treatment journey. For this study, the researcher completed two surveys: Folkman and Lazarus’s 66-item Ways of Coping-Revised (student sample version) and the 40-item Chinese Value Survey to frame the discussion of Chinese values and coping in the narrative. The study aim was to provide a deeper cultural understanding of the author, a Chinese American woman, on how she coped with breast cancer and the role Chinese values played in her lived experiences

An Ensemble Model with Ranking for Social Dialogue

Open-domain social dialogue is one of the long-standing goals of Artificial Intelligence. This year, the Amazon Alexa Prize challenge was announced for the first time, where real customers get to rate systems developed by leading universities worldwide. The aim of the challenge is to converse "coherently and engagingly with humans on popular topics for 20 minutes". We describe our Alexa Prize system (called 'Alana') consisting of an ensemble of bots, combining rule-based and machine learning systems, and using a contextual ranking mechanism to choose a system response. The ranker was trained on real user feedback received during the competition, where we address the problem of how to train on the noisy and sparse feedback obtained during the competition.Comment: NIPS 2017 Workshop on Conversational A

Accelerating Multi-Agent Planning Using Graph Transformers with Bounded Suboptimality

Conflict-Based Search is one of the most popular methods for multi-agent path finding. Though it is complete and optimal, it does not scale well. Recent works have been proposed to accelerate it by introducing various heuristics. However, whether these heuristics can apply to non-grid-based problem settings while maintaining their effectiveness remains an open question. In this work, we find that the answer is prone to be no. To this end, we propose a learning-based component, i.e., the Graph Transformer, as a heuristic function to accelerate the planning. The proposed method is provably complete and bounded-suboptimal with any desired factor. We conduct extensive experiments on two environments with dense graphs. Results show that the proposed Graph Transformer can be trained in problem instances with relatively few agents and generalizes well to a larger number of agents, while achieving better performance than state-of-the-art methods.Comment: Accepted by ICRA 202

Interaction of the Essential Drosophila Nuclear Protein YA with P0/AP3 in the Cytoplasm and in Vitro: Implications for Developmental Regulation of YA's Subcellular Location

AbstractThe Drosophila nuclear lamina protein YA is essential for the transition from female meiosis to embryo mitosis. Its localization and, hence, function is under developmental and cell cycle controls. YA protein is hyperphosphorylated and cytoplasmic in ovaries. Upon egg activation, YA is partially dephosphorylated and acquires the ability to enter nuclei. Its function is first detected at this time. To investigate the cytoplasmic retention machinery that keeps YA from entering nuclei, we used affinity chromatography and blot overlay assays to identify cytoplasmic proteins that associate with YA. Drosophila P0/AP3, a ribosomal protein that is also an apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease, binds to YA in ovary and embryo cytoplasms. P0 and YA bind specifically and directly in vitro and are present in a 20S complex in the cytoplasmic extracts. YA protein can be phosphorylated by MAPK, but not by p34Cdc2 kinase, in vitro. This phosphorylation increases YA's binding to P0. We propose that the P0-containing 20S cytoplasmic complex retains hyperphosphorylated ovarian YA in the cytoplasm. In response to egg activation, YA is partially dephosphorylated and its binding to the 20S complex is reduced. Hence, some YA dissociates from the complex and enters nuclei. Consistent with this model, decreasing P0 levels partially suppress a hypomorphic Ya mutant allele

High-resolution mapping of fluoroquinolones in TB rabbit lesions reveals specific distribution in immune cell types.

Understanding the distribution patterns of antibiotics at the site of infection is paramount to selecting adequate drug regimens and developing new antibiotics. Tuberculosis (TB) lung lesions are made of various immune cell types, some of which harbor persistent forms of the pathogen, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. By combining high resolution MALDI MSI with histology staining and quantitative image analysis in rabbits with active TB, we have mapped the distribution of a fluoroquinolone at high resolution, and identified the immune-pathological factors driving its heterogeneous penetration within TB lesions, in relation to where bacteria reside. We find that macrophage content, distance from lesion border and extent of necrosis drive the uneven fluoroquinolone penetration. Preferential uptake in macrophages and foamy macrophages, where persistent bacilli reside, compared to other immune cells present in TB granulomas, was recapitulated in vitro using primary human cells. A nonlinear modeling approach was developed to help predict the observed drug behavior in TB lesions. This work constitutes a methodological advance for the co-localization of drugs and infectious agents at high spatial resolution in diseased tissues, which can be applied to other diseases with complex immunopathology

Understanding human facial attractiveness from multiple views

Facial attractiveness has long been a topic of interest for cognitive scientists. Early psychological research has foundthat averageness, distinctiveness and familiarity of a face can influence facial attractiveness. However, faces also convey richsocial information. How various social features are related to facial attractiveness hasn’t been systematically studied before.We investigate facial attractiveness in the context of social feature evaluation and find that social attributes like appearinginteresting and sociable contribute to facial attractiveness whereas appearing boring, and humble are negatively correlated withattractiveness. We further compare social features of faces with the physical configuration of faces and we are able to usegeometric features to predict facial attractiveness. We further study the individual differences on attractiveness perception andfind out that. Our study illustrates that social attributes and pixel information can go hand in hand to facilitate attractivenessprediction

Systematic optimization for production of the anti-MRSA antibiotics WAP-8294A in an engineered strain of Lysobacter enzymogenes

WAP-8294A is a group of cyclic lipodepsipeptides and considered as the first-in-class new chemical entity with potent activity against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. One of the roadblocks in developing the WAP-8294A antibiotics is the very low yield in Lysobacter. Here, we carried out a systematic investigation of the nutritional and environmental conditions in an engineered L. enzymogenes strain for the optimal production of WAP-8294A. We developed an activity-based simple method for quick screening of various factors, which enabled us to optimize the culture conditions. With the method, we were able to improve the WAP-8294A yield by 10-fold in small-scale cultures and approximately 15-fold in scale-up fermentation. Additionally, we found the ratio of WAP-8294A2 to WAP-8294A1 in the strains could be manipulated through medium optimization. The development of a practical method for yield improvement in Lysobacter will facilitate the ongoing basic research and clinical studies to develop WAP- 8294A into true therapeutics

The Aquarius Co-Moving Group is Not a Disrupted Classical Globular Cluster

We present a detailed analysis of high-resolution, high S/N spectra for 5 Aquarius stream stars observed with the MIKE spectrograph on the Magellan Clay telescope. Our sample represents one third of the 15 known members in the stream. We find the stream is not mono-metallic: the metallicity ranges from [Fe/H] = -0.63 to -1.58. No anti-correlation in Na-O abundances is present, and we find a strong positive Mg-Al relationship, similar to that observed in the thick disk. We find no evidence that the stream is a result of a disrupted classical globular cluster, contrary to a previously published claim. High [(Na, Ni, alpha)/Fe] and low [Ba/Y] abundance ratios in the stream suggests it is not a tidal tail from a disrupted dwarf galaxy, either. The stream is chemically indistinguishable from Milky Way field stars with the exception of one candidate, C222531-145437. From its position, velocity, and detailed chemical abundances, C222531-145437 is likely a star that was tidally disrupted from omega-Centauri. We propose the Aquarius stream is Galactic in origin, and could be the result from a disk-satellite perturbation in the Milky Way thick disk on the order of a few Gyr ago: derived orbits, UVW velocities, and angular momenta of the Aquarius members offer qualitative support for our hypothesis. Assuming C222531-145437 is a tidally disrupted member of omega-Centauri, this system is the most likely disk perturber. In the absence of compelling chemical and/or dynamical evidence that the Aquarius stream is the tidal tail of a disrupted satellite, we advocate the "Aquarius group" as a more appropriate description. Like the Canis Major over-density, as well as the Hercules and Monoceros groups, the Aquarius group joins the list of kinematically-identified substructures that are not actually accreted material: they are simply part of the rich complexity of the Milky Way structure.Comment: Accepted to MNRAS. Updated to journal versio

Postprandial And Fasting Lipopolysaccharide Levels In Healthy Hispanic Residents Of Southeast Texas With Positive Family History Of Type 2 Diabetes

PURPOSE: Healthy people with a family history (FH+) of type 2 diabetes (T2D) display impaired metabolic and microvascular function prior to glucose intolerance, and are at greater risk for developing T2D. While mechanisms to explain this disparity are lacking, it is possible that intestinal permeability plays a role, as it is also linked with insulin resistance, glucose intolerance, and chronic inflammation. Lipopolysaccharides (LPS) act as an outer membrane component of gram-negative bacteria in intestines and play a role in inflammation and chronic disease when in circulation, thus serving as a surrogate measure of intestinal permeability. However, the link between FH+ health disparities and intestinal permeability has not been studied. Thus, the purpose of this study was to quantify circulating plasma LPS in healthy FH+ and FH-. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, FH- (n=14) and FH+ (n=18) participants matched for age (24.4 ± 1.6 and 25.0 ± 2.3 respectively) and BMI (25.0 ± 1.1 and 25.0 ± 1.1 years respectively) had blood drawn while fasting, and 60-min after consuming a mixed composition meal to quantify changes in plasma LPS, and had body composition determined via iDXA. Other anthropogenic data were collected. RESULTS: Fasting LPS was lower in FH- than FH+ (p \u3c 0.5, 42.3ng/ml ± 5.3 and 48.1ng/ml ± 6.8 respectively) with postprandial LPS increasing more in FH- than FH+ (p\u3c0.05, +10.3ng/ml ± 3.1 and + 1.4ng/ml ± 3.1 respectively). No group differences (p\u3e0.5) were noted in blood pressure (115/69 and 116/69mmHG) LDL-c (4.3mmol/L and 4.4mmol/L), HDL-c (2.2mmol/L and 2.3mmol/L), body fat (29% and 28%), or android fat (30.4% and 30.7%) between FH- and FH+ groups respectively. CONCLUSION: Disparities noted for increase T2D risk in FH+ have been linked to microvascular and metabolic function, with mechanisms for these remaining elusive. However, differences in circulating LPS suggest varying intestinal permeability in these groups, which may help explain the varying risk for T2D. Further work to characterize intestinal microbiota may advance our understanding of health disparities in this and other high-risk populations